Still Scully

Finally, almost six years after they wrapped, Gillian Anderson found herself sitting in a room again with David Duchovny and "X-Files" creator Chris Carter.

"It was quite a monumental event," Anderson says of the first time they gathered to read through the script of the second movie, "The X-Files: I Want to Believe," which opens Friday.

"On the one hand, it felt incredibly familiar and kind of melancholy and sweet and wistful in some way. And on the other hand, it felt strange and awkward and like I was an impostor somehow on this other world."

It was the world Anderson inhabited for most of her young adult life. She landed the role of FBI Agent Dana Scully on the cult sci-fi series when she was just 24 and spent nearly a decade chasing aliens through the snowdrifts of Vancouver, where it was shot.

Last week, after flying to L.A. from London -- the city that's been her home for the past five years -- the 39-year old actress happened upon "a table full of giggly 20-something girls drinking and talking nonstop."

"When I think to myself, 'Where was I then?' I forget that I ended up skipping a huge chunk of that period because I was working," she says. "I was very myopic during the series ... but I don't regret it in any way."

Agent Scully was a role that propelled her from anonymous to iconic and left a mark she never could have imagined at the outset.

Career-wise too, Scully seemed fastened to Anderson after the series ended. She recalls fearing that she'd be offered only roles that were Scully-like. Instead, it was perhaps worse -- "people just had a hard time seeing where Scully would fit into their films," she says. "They couldn't make the leap to it being Gillian and not Scully and that I might be able to do other things."

Eventually, some directors did take the risk, casting Anderson in several London stage productions, a BBC adaptation of "Bleak House" and the feature film "The Last King of Scotland." She also moved to London, had a second child and became pregnant with a third. (She is due in October. It will be her second baby with boyfriend Mark Griffiths. She is twice divorced.)

Even if the film does reinforce her perceived union with Scully, the trade off is worth it, she says.

"I wasn't gonna let this experience of this reunion pass by because that might be the case," she says, adding, "I don't think that will happen. I've done enough stuff already and ... have things scheduled for the future that are different, so I don't think that will be an issue."